Ould Bouamama Sundström, Malin

Abstract [en]

The paper aims to examine how the wives of men with dementia experience their lives and how they perceive support from the society. The paper also aims to highlight the family care consultants´ work and views on support for families of people with dementia.

Three spouses of people with dementia and three family care consultants were interviewed and the results were analyzed using Antonovsky's (1991) three theoretical concepts; comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness that comes from his theory Sense of coherence.

The results show that the three wives whose men suffered from dementia spend most of their time, effort and energy on their husbands. They do not have time to think about their own needs and what support they feel they could use for themselves. They do not think about themselves as caregivers, they are spouses.

Family care consultants are well aware of the importance of meeting and see the relatives in their lives, and denounces the importance of a support designed individually. Family care consultants understand that the most important and the best support society can provide a family care giver is that their close ones are well taken care of and given good care.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

2013. , p. 40

Keyword [en]

Dementia, Family care consultant, Family Caregiver, Sence of Coherense-SOC, Spouses, Support